


a grace too powerful to name

by Veridique



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Families of Choice, Forgiveness, Gen, IPRE family, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-10-10 23:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17435792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veridique/pseuds/Veridique
Summary: Lucretia's absolution, told in eight parts by seven birds





	1. l'archiviste solitaire

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "It's Quiet Uptown," from _Hamilton: An American Musical_

The first time Lucretia loses her family is the day the Starblaster takes flight. She watches as the force she would come to call the Hunger consumes her plane of existence. Every family member—her parents and her sister and her second cousins three times removed who she's never met—and every school friend and every neighbor, gone. Just like that.

The crew of the Starblaster doesn’t mourn, not right then. It’s too much, the uncertainty and then the absolute, deafening certainty. Instead they do what they can, not knowing, that first cycle, when the Hunger would come or what would happen after. It’s a few cycles in by the time Lucretia allows herself to truly process that her world, like the world of animals and each subsequent world they’ve visited, is truly gone.

The second time Lucretia loses her family, it’s after 65 years with them, over three times the amount of life she lived on her home world. She had thought that nothing could be worse than watching her family die, but now she knows better: the only thing worse than watching your family die is not watching. She hides in the ship, this ship that was _theirs_ but is now _hers_ , running and hiding and fighting and learning how to be all seven parts of a crew without knowing where the other six are. She wants to believe they’re still alive, that Davenport has assembled the crew ( _or even a part of it_ , she begs whatever god might be listening, _or even just one_ ) and is blazing a trail back to her. But she has too much faith in her family; she knows if even one of them were still alive, they’d find their way back. And after five months of nothing, she knows that they’re dead.

She’s the survivor.

She teaches herself to fly the ship, from battered manuals in filing cabinets that she has to pry open with a screwdriver (she breaks twelve of Lup’s hairpins trying to pick the lock and wishes with all her heart that Lup were there to be angry with her) and from Davenport’s scribblings in his captain’s log (wanting desperately to be able to make fun of him for his terrible penmanship and nonsensical shorthand). She patches up the ship the best she can, and she keeps herself alive, because the only way she’ll be able to see her family again is if she survives.

She's their only hope.

The third time Lucretia loses her family, it’s her fault.

Barry and Lup aren’t, she supposes. Lup disappeared on her own, and Barry went missing shortly after she fed her journals to Fisher—she suspects his body is lying in a ditch somewhere, and it breaks her heart to think of Barry, so full of hope and life and love, committing suicide as soon as he realized what was happening, valuing the memory of Lup and the crew and all they’d done together more than his own corporeal form.

But the others, those are her burdens.

She finds a community of beach dwarves, hoping that Merle will enjoy the peaceful life he well deserves after so many years aboard the ship. She picks out a town for Magnus; in her search for the right place, her two requirements are the availability of craftsfolk and the presence of a dog park. She creates a home and a show and a spotlight for Taako, knowing that a cheering crowd will never begin to make up for what Taako has lost, but hoping against hope that maybe Taako’s caravan will take him to whatever dark corner of the world Lup has been hiding in. His mind wouldn’t recognize her, but his soul, Lucretia convinces herself, his soul would know his sister anywhere.

She tells herself it’s a kindness to Davenport to keep him close; she’s protecting this broken man from the world he helped to save; he’d never survive on his own, not with how badly she damaged him. But in truth, it’s a kindness to herself, the last prick of selfishness she can afford. Her family is gone, splintered to the corners of this world that isn’t _hers_ but is now _theirs_ , and leaving Merle, Magnus, and Taako behind in their new homes broke her heart. She pressed a kiss to each of their foreheads as they slept, silently promising that she’d see them again, that she’d be able to explain, that they’d be a family again.

She can’t do that to Davenport. Not him, too.

So she keeps him close. Rumors spread across the Bureau about why the Director keeps a halfwit gnome by her side, rumors that he’s her lover or that he’s faking his insanity. Once she hears a whisper that lands a little too close to the truth, that _the Director did something to Davenport to make him like this and now she feels bad, that’s why she keeps him around_. It would break her heart, except that by now she’s accustomed to the pain of making the hard call that no one understands. So she lets her underlings whisper and theorize; as long as they do their work, she won’t stop them from trying to guess her motives.

She knows they’ll never get it right. She made sure of that.

The fourth time Lucretia loses her family, it’s when they remember what she did.

Taako is pointing his staff ( _Lup’s staff_ , she wants to remind him, except that she knows he already remembers too much right now) at her, and counting down, and cursing and raging and hovering on the verge of crying. She says the words that she feels she ought to say, but there’s no passion in her voice, not the way she expected there’d be if she were threatened with death by a man who is without a doubt furious enough to follow through.

She’s trusted her judgment all these years, and look where that’s landed her.

So she’ll trust Taako’s. 

If he deems her crimes worthy of death, then she’ll die at his hand with the knowledge that it’s what she deserves. If he allows her to live, she swears to herself in this moment that she will do whatever it takes to make this world better. She has no more regard for her own well-being. Everything she does now is for her family.

Magnus talks Taako into lowering his staff, and Lucretia watches as something even more terrifying than rage crosses Taako’s face: apathy. She’s seen his apathy, his complete lack of consideration for anyone except the people he defines as _his_. It’s never scared her like this before, though; she’s never been on the far side of that dividing line.

But she deserves it. After all, she’s the one who robbed him of the one person who has always been _his_.

She’ll trust Taako’s judgment. She’ll take whatever he decides that she deserves. Death, perhaps, or imprisonment. Hatred, certainly. She knows her family is lost to her, in a way that she’s never lost a family before.

She deserves no forgiveness for what she’s done to them.


	2. le conciliateur

Merle can tell that Lucretia is in pain. The acclaim they’ve won from the whole world knowing of their work suits him, but Lucretia has never been interested in the spotlight. She holds herself apart from everything and everyone, like a collector afraid to touch their hoard for fear of breaking a treasured trinket.

So, since Lucretia won’t reach out to anyone, Merle makes it his goal to reach out to her.

The first time he pops his head into her office to ask if she wants to go to lunch, she looks almost paralyzed at the sight of him, and takes a solid ten seconds to reply that yes, she’d love to go, if he’d have her. He continues asking, until they have standing lunch plans every Tuesday.

Their conversations over lunch are always hesitantly polite. Merle keeps the conversation light, talking about Magnus’s new dogs and Mookie’s latest science fair project. Lucretia rarely contributes, and Merle can’t even be sure she enjoys the lunches, but she never refuses.

One Tuesday, Lucretia is particularly quiet. She sits across from Merle and pushes her salad around on her plate until Merle asks if she’s all right.

“Merle, I’m…” She seems to be searching for the right words to use. “I guess I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Not sure I know what you mean,” he says around a mouth full of sandwich. He’s not sure why she’s decided today is the day for a heartfelt conversation, but if this is when Lucretia wants to talk, then he’s here for her.

“When you first invited me to lunch, I expected…a fight. I expected you to be angry with me; you have every right to be. And I’m not sure why you keep inviting me to have lunch with you after—after what I did to you.”

“And what is it that you did to me?”

She laughs, more surprised than amused. “I wiped a hundred years from your memory. I lied to you about who I was and how I knew you.”

“Yeah, but…” He finishes his bite of sandwich and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. “It all worked out, didn’t it?”

“So you’re not angry?”

He shrugs. “I could be. I could hate every shitty thing that’s happened to me in my life. But I want to be grateful for the joys that I’ve found, even if sorrow brought me there.”

“You’re telling me that it all evens out?”

“Think about it this way. My marriage was…it wasn’t good. But if I hadn’t married Hekuba, I wouldn’t get to watch my kids grow up. I wouldn’t know the joy of being a dad. And if I could go back? I’d take all the hurt all over again, in exchange for just one of Mookie’s grins.” He remembers the choice he was offered in Wonderland, how he didn’t hesitate for a second to take a penalty to preserve the memory of his children’s births. “There are some joys that are worth the sorrow. And hey, along those lines, if you hadn’t dropped me off at that beach, I never would have married Hekuba. So really, I ought to thank you for letting me get to know my kids.”

Tears are welling up in Lucretia’s eyes. “Merle, I don’t know what to say. I never expected anyone to forgive me.”

“Well, there’s your problem.” His tone is lighthearted and sincere. “From where I’m standing, at least, there’s nothing to forgive.”


	3. le protecteur

“Magnus?”

He turns his head to see Lucretia, holding a wrapped bundle about the size of a fist. “Can we talk?” she asks, gesturing to a bench not far behind him.

They sit, and she hands him the gift. He tears the paper off to find a small stuffed bear, clearly sewn by an amateur.

“I figured I owed you, for all the ducks you made for me,” she says with a small smile.

He returns the smile. “Thank you.”

“I wanted to speak with you about more than just your ducks, though.”

“I figured as much.”

“I imagine you have some things you’d like to say. And I imagine I deserve them.”

Magnus certainly has some things he’d like to say, but the sad and resigned look on her face makes him gentle his words. “What I don’t understand is why you took it all on yourself.”

“I know. I robbed you of your autonomy. I interfered in your lives and took knowledge from you that you deserved to have. I made unilateral decisions that—"

“No, no, Lucretia, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, why didn’t you let us help?”

“What?” Lucretia furrows her brow and properly looks at Magnus for the first time since she handed him the bear.

“My job is to protect my family,” he continues. “It always has been. But in order to do that, I need to know that my family will trust me enough to let me take care of them, as much as I trust that they’ll take care of me when I need it. And you sending me away to go live as a carpenter in Ravens’ Roost felt like a slap in the damn face.”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust you, Magnus. The relics were causing too much harm, and I had to end it. And none of you would have let me do what I needed to do if I hadn’t erased your memories.”

“I understand your motives. But you did all this because you didn’t trust us. You didn’t think that we’d back your play. But you didn’t even ask!” Magnus has been trying to stay calm, but his own words agitate him. “What did we ever—what did _I_ ever do to make you doubt me?”

“It wasn’t you, Magnus.”

“I was the one who suggested that we could try your shield plan if the relics didn’t work. I’ve always been your friend. Why did you think you had to get rid of my memories to get me on your side?”

Lucretia is silent for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” she says finally, her face downcast and her eyes pressed closed. “I'm sorry that I didn’t trust you.”

Before she can even open her eyes, Magnus’s arms are wrapped around her, holding her tightly. He can feel her shoulders gently trembling against his body. “That’s all I needed to hear,” he whispers.


	4. l'amant

Lup is beautiful no matter what form she’s in. When she’s dancing around the kitchen with her brother, when she’s hungover and grumpy after a late night, when her incorporeal skeletal form hovers by the side of their bed, Barry never thinks of Lup as anything less than stunning.

But the moment he sees her come out of the tank, fully embodied again, she's the most radiant he's ever seen her.

She flicks her wrist and murmurs an incantation, and a spectral mage hand lifts a red robe from the dressmaker’s mannequin beside the tank and drapes it over Lup’s shoulders. “Man, I forgot how good I look,” she says as she checks herself out.

“I didn’t,” Barry assures her, rushing to her side to hold her hand. Its warmth and pressure nearly bring him to tears.

“I’m about to smooch your fucking brains out, babe,” she announces, gazing into his eyes with an intensity that Barry never realized he had missed.

They somehow escape getting a noise complaint throughout the ensuing hours, and Barry considers it a second miracle of the day.

It’s that evening, when Lup goes to see Taako, that Barry knocks on Lucretia’s door.

She’s dressed casually; rather than her typical business wear, she’s wearing a floor-length skirt of soft gray cotton and a black sweater. Barry hadn’t announced his intention to come to her home, and her eyes go wide for a moment.

“Barry! Is everything—did something go wrong?”

He shakes his head, and he can’t keep from smiling. “She’s back.”

Lucretia’s eyes fill with joy, and she throws her arms around Barry. He responds in kind, and they stand there for a long moment in Lucretia’s doorway, both of them shaking and smiling and acutely aware of how lucky they are.

When they finally break from the hug, Lucretia invites him in. The inside of her house reminds him of her room on the Starblaster, with some small potted succulents on shelves and tables, and bookshelves lining nearly every wall. But her books and papers are more scattered than she used to keep them, and a glass sitting on the table beside the couch holds a liquid that looks suspiciously like the dark brown liquor Lucretia always wrinkled her nose at—enough small details to remind him that time has passed. 

They sit on the couch, Lucretia wrapping a blanket around her legs. He’d noticed that her hair had gone grey since he last saw her, but he realizes for the first time how much thinner it is than he remembers. The wrinkles around her eyes as she watches him carefully remind him that she’s lost time. His family had traveled together for so long, never aging, and the last decade he’s spent flipping between lich form and newly grown bodies has distanced him from the idea of physically aging. They’ll get older now—he can already see Magnus and Lucretia beginning to fade, and even Davenport doesn’t get around as quickly as he used to. At about a decade older than the other two humans on the Starblaster, he’d taken it for granted that he wouldn’t outlive any of them, that his family would bury him. But now, between the years he spent paused in time and the years Lucretia lost in Wonderland, he’s faced with the very real possibility that he’ll lose his family before they lose him.

“Thank you,” Lucretia says abruptly. “For coming to tell me. I’m glad she’s all right.”

“Of course. I know you love her, too.”

“I wish she knew that.”

“She does, Luce.” 

“I appreciate the sentiment, Barry,” Lucretia says, staring into her lap and fidgeting with the corner of her blanket, “but you don’t need to spare my feelings.”

“I’m not! She knows you love her. But she’s angry. Can you blame her?”

Lucretia shakes her head sadly, then looks to him. “And you _aren’t_ angry?”

He was. He has been. 

“I don’t think what you did was right,” he begins. “I think you caused a lot of hurt and risked even more. But I can’t go the rest of my life angry with you.” He slides closer to her, takes her hands in both of his. “I think that’s what it means to forgive: I’m not saying that what happened was okay, but I’m saying that I don’t want to be angry anymore.”

“I’ve tried not to be angry. It never works.” Lucretia’s voice is heavy with the history of all the things she has (and all of them have) to be angry about.

“It’s not about trying not to be angry. It’s about—you’re my family, Lucretia. You and Lup and Taako and the others, the seven of us, we’re a family. And I can be angry with my family, and maybe I am. But I don’t want to be.”

Barry does some mental calculations, realizes that Taako will almost certainly insist on making Lup breakfast in the morning (and possibly lunch and dinner and a few meals in between), concludes that he has nowhere he needs to be for at least another eighteen hours, and slips his legs under Lucretia’s blanket beside hers, entangling their arms, laying his head on her shoulder as he’s done so many times over so many decades.

He doesn’t fall asleep until he feels Lucretia’s breathing slow.


	5. la jumelle

“We’ve got to address the lich in the room, Creesh.” Lup has never once knocked on Lucretia’s door, and she certainly isn’t going to start now.

Lucretia looks up and puts down her quill, setting her parchment aside and gesturing to the chair in front of her desk.

Lup sits, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee.

Lucretia speaks first. “Lup, I’m sorry that I didn’t find you—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Lup says. “I was in an umbrella in a nearly unnavigable cave; I can’t fault you for not looking there.”

Lucretia smiles weakly.

“But when my brother walked into your office with that umbrella in hand, and outright asked you if you knew what it was, and you lied to him—”

“I couldn’t—”

“And then you convinced my family that Barry and I were the grand enemies of your plan to save the world—that, Lucretia, I have some problems with.”

“I—I know.”

“You sent them into fights up against people who wielded our relics. You knew how dangerous the relics were, and they didn’t, and you let them go. Alone.”

“Do you think I loved them any less than you did?” Lucretia’s eyes are downcast, but her voice is sharp.

“Yes!” Lup’s feet are both planted on the floor now. “You can tell me that we were your family, that you spent a century with us, whatever. But Taako’s my _brother_. We have been by each other’s sides since the day we were born. You know how many times we tried to sacrifice ourselves for one another on the Starblaster? Because we’re both selfish assholes, and we both knew that whoever had to live out the rest of the year alone was getting the worse deal. I have died for him before, and I would do it again without a second thought. And you risked his life on this, the last cycle, because you were a _coward_.” She spits the last word.

Lucretia flinches but doesn’t look up. “You’re right.”

_Of course I’m right_ , Lup thinks bitterly. “About what?” If Lucretia’s going to eat crow, she’s going to be specific about it.

“I was a coward.” Lucretia finally makes eye contact. “I sent Taako and Merle and Magnus into fights that I was too scared to go into. I risked their lives to clean up the mess that only I could be held responsible for.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“What do you want to hear? That I wish I had been braver? That I’d give anything to have found the answer without risking the lives of the people I love?”

“I want to hear you apologize for what you did wrong.”

“I’m sorry that I didn’t trust my family. I’m sorry that I didn’t ask for their help in solving the problem.”

“How about ‘I’m sorry for putting your brother in mortal peril countless times?’ ‘I’m sorry for erasing you from his memory?’”

“I’m not going to say that.”

“Excuse me?” Lup draws herself to her feet.

Lucretia’s eyes follow her. “I was between a rock and a hard place, and I made the tough call. I’m not proud of what I did. And I’d do it again.”

_Sometimes there aren’t right decisions. Sometimes there’s just decisions._ Taako’s words have spun in Lup’s mind a thousand times, but they’ve never resonated the way they do just now. 

She nods, a gleam of respect in her eyes. If Lucretia had gotten on her knees and begged for forgiveness, insisting she was wrong about everything, that would mean that their family’s lives had been risked for nothing—for a mistake. Lup is angry about how close she came to losing them, but a spark of pride within her blooms at the sight of Lucretia—the shy, solitary notetaker—standing her ground.

Lup isn’t ready to let go of her anger, not yet. But in this moment, sinking back down into her chair, she can envision a future where she is ready, a future where _I almost lost my brother_ pales in comparison to _but I didn’t_. 

And that will have to be good enough.


	6. le sans-paroles

Davenport struggles after getting his memories back, more than he’d like to admit. The memories of the century he lost come all in a flash with a sip of Junior’s ichor, but the memories of the decade in between are harder to grasp. He’s heard it said that people organize their memories by words—you remember things in terms of _when I was a child_ and _while I was living in such-and-such town_ , and his insistent repetition of his own name didn’t exactly give him a framework for storing memories. He spends long hours on his ship staring out at the stars over the horizon or up at the wooden ceiling of his berth, trying to piece together what memories are real and where they go.

It’s a solitary process, restructuring your own autobiography.

And a long one. Time moves differently for him than he ever remembers it moving; he doesn’t have a sense of the passage of time. He doesn’t allow it to bother him when he’s out on the open ocean—he sails on no schedule, and he’ll find out what day it is (or what month, or what year) the next time he stops in a port city for provisions. Perhaps if he were younger, he might be more upset by the gaps where he loses time, or the periods where his days stretch on for weeks. But he’s old, even by gnome standards, and he’s had enough hours not to worry if a few go missing.

His friends worry, he knows. Magnus writes him regularly and ends every letter reminding Davenport that, anytime he wants to retire from the seafaring life, he’s always got a place to stay at Hammer and Tails. He’s got a feeling that Merle keeps him in his prayers, as Davenport always seems to dock just before a wild storm hits, and his ship’s hulls never cover with barnacles as fast as other ships. At Taako and Kravitz’s wedding, he sees a small look of surprise on Barry’s face before he masks his expressions and sweeps Davenport off his feet in a hug. Davenport’s gotten weary, and his age is beginning to show on his face as much as on his heart.

He doesn’t wonder about Lucretia. Not for a long time. His memories of Lucretia are the most jumbled, from all the time he spent with her when he couldn’t think at all. It’s hard to even look at her face, even now that his mind doesn’t fill with static when his eyes meet hers. Learned helplessness, he supposes—he spent so much time unable to think of her that he just forgot how.

He doesn’t know where the impulse to buy a sixth postcard comes from, but he’s too old to be second-guessing himself, so he buys it. He writes the same message on it as all the others, telling briefly of his travels, letting his family know he’s all right. He closes it “joyfully yours” out of habit, signs his name with the same flourish as always, seals it. He only hesitates once, before addressing it. A small bitter voice inside says to address it to “Madam Director,” to pretend that their relationship was one of coworkers and not friends, not family. But he shakes his head as the memory of a young woman with bouncing curls writing in two notebooks at the same time floats into his mind, and he addresses it _Lucretia, Bureau of Benevolence_.

She writes back, a longer letter than his postcard, and he writes back, a longer letter still, and they’re exchanging letters about the banal things—about their endeavors and their minor illnesses—but never about the years past. 

Never about anything that matters.

When he finally brings up the past, it’s off-handed. He asks about a running joke that Taako and Lup used to have, because he can remember both parts of the joke but can’t quite recall who used to say what, and he doesn’t want to get it wrong the next time he sees one of them.

His simple question breaks the floodgates. Lucretia’s response comes in three bulging envelopes, stuffed to capacity with sheets of parchment, lined front-and-back with her small, precise handwriting. As he reads, his head swims with the puzzle of decoding Lucretia’s perspective on events he can’t be sure whether he remembers. Pushing her letter aside, he begins one of his own.

_Dear Lucretia,_

_You forget, I was your captain. I was the one who made the call to fly away from our home, to leave our plane of existence to the Hunger._

What’s clear from her letter is that she’s apologizing for the harm she did.

_I know what it means to make a tough decision. I still believe I made the right one. That doesn’t mean I don’t lose sleep wondering_ what if _? It doesn’t mean ~~everyone~~ anyone will understand._

_But I believe I made the right call._

Another memory floats forward in his mind, one of Lucretia standing, defiant against the face of death itself, after the year she spent alone. This Lucretia is not the shy, quiet archivist. He was always the captain, but Lucretia will always be Madam Director.

_Believe, Lucretia. Believe in your call._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay! This chapter was a tricky one, and I hope I did it justice. The final two chapters are actually already written, so they should be up in the next couple of days. Thanks for your patience!


	7. le jumeau

Taako avoids Lucretia as much as he can after the Day of Story and Song. He sees her at Lup and Barry’s wedding, although thankfully she’s smart enough to stay away from him. He thinks he’s probably too good of a person to start a fight at his sister’s wedding, but best not to test that theory.

He bribes Magnus into cleaning out his room on the moon base for him, so he doesn’t have to risk running into Lucretia there. Actually, Magnus offers to clean out his room, but a week later, as payment, Taako makes him a dope dish to bring to Carey and Killian’s housewarming party. He even lets Magnus say he made it himself, because the last thing Taako wants is to owe anyone, even Magnus, a favor.

He avoids Lucretia, because what is there to say? He could rage, and rage he does; with Kravitz, after waking up in a nightmare; with Lup, as they get sloppy drunk on the couch and rant about what they’ve seen, with their husbands drinking coffee in the next room. He tells Kravitz it’s therapeutic, and he thinks Lup tells Barry the same. It feels good, to get rid of it all.

But he has nothing to say to Lucretia. Nothing she doesn’t already know. She knows he’s angry, and she knows he’ll be angry till the day he dies.

What he eventually realizes is that “till the day he dies” is far longer on Lucretia’s time scale than on his.

When he sees her at Magnus’s bedside, as the first of the seven birds settles into a permanent roost, he’s momentarily shocked. He’s watched Magnus grow old, but in his imagination, Lucretia has always been Lucretia: mid-fifties, hair more gray speckles than not, but vibrant. Powerful.

The Lucretia he sees sitting in a chair is not what he pictured. She’s lost weight, and her deep brown skin is marked with more wrinkles than he remembers. Merle reaches out his hand to her, and her hand trembles as she takes it, in a way that Taako doesn’t think is from grief.

It’s not long after Magnus passes that Taako visits Lucretia.

As he enters the room, Lucretia’s eyes squint. He’s not sure if her vision is fading, or if she’s not sure that what she’s seeing is real.

“Lucretia.”

A moment passes, before a smile crosses her face. “Taako?” Her voice sounds incredulous.

“Who else?”

“I’m glad you came,” she says, after a minute of silence. There’s a chair by her bedside, but Taako isn’t sitting.

“There are some things I need to say to you.”

She nods. “You’ve needed to say them for a while.”

“I’d say I’m sorry it took me this long, but…I’m not.” He’s not here to preserve her feelings. 

“Is this because of Magnus?”

“Magnus got his happy ending. I’m working on mine. But I’m not here so that you can have yours. I’m not here to tell you I forgive you, because I don’t. And I won’t.”

She nods again, closing her eyes as if she’s been expecting this. As if she’s been expecting this for decades.

“Lup made me who I am, Lucretia. When I lost her, I lost myself. You stole _me_ from _myself_ so that I could be _useful_ to you. I walked into your office with Lup’s staff in my hand and you didn’t say boo! You let us work for you as if we were strangers. As if we were _dust_.”

She flinches but does nothing to stop his tirade.

“You took everything from me. And maybe there’s someone in the world who could forgive that, but I can’t. I’m furious with you, Lucretia, even after all this time. I didn’t deserve what you did to me.”

“No, you didn’t,” she agrees. “I understand that you hate me. And I don’t blame you.”

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

The question seems to take her aback. “Not like you love Lup,” she eventually replies

“Yeah, I know that.” She’s saying what she thinks he wants to hear. “But that’s not what I asked. Have you ever loved anyone?”

“Yes, of course.” Her words are quick, as if she’s been waiting all this time to explain herself but isn’t sure Taako will give her the time. “You all were my family for that whole century. I loved you. I love you.”

“And you think you were the only one on that godforsaken ship that felt that way?” He doesn’t give her time to respond. “I went from having one person in my life who I could rely on to having six. You think I didn’t grieve every time I watched one of you die? Even if I knew you’d be back in a year? I loved you.” He takes a moment to blink back the tears from his eyes and swallow the sob in his throat. “I love you.”

Lucretia draws a sharp intake of breath.

He sinks to his knees by her bedside. “I’m furious with you. And I love you.”

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness—”

“And you won’t get it. I don’t forgive you, and I won’t forgive you. But I love you.”

He lifts her fragile hand, kisses the paper-thin skin. “Go in peace.”

He turns and leaves, with nothing left to say. He’ll never speak another word to Lucretia. But unlike so many exits, this one goes exactly how he could have wished for it to go.


	8. l’archiviste solitaire (2e partie)

The last time Lucretia loses her family, it’s time to go. 

She wonders if it will be someone she knows, if Kravitz or Barry or Lup might come to take her through the veil where, by all rights, she should have been a long time ago. She’s gotten so much longer than any human reasonably gets, but she still thinks, sometimes, about those twenty years she lost in Wonderland, and where she might be if not for that. Maybe that’s the real _wonder_ of Wonderland, all the time she’s spent _wondering_ about all she lost in there.

But it’s too late for wondering. 

She’s alone, and she’s expected nothing less. Merle has the hands of his children to hold; he has no time for hers. Magnus passed a few years ago; he was younger than Lucretia, but the wear and tear on his body took years off his lifespan. She’s spent the time since he died trying not to calculate how much of that wear and tear happened in her defense, how many years he might have sacrificed for her. Lup and Barry see people die all the time; she isn’t narcissistic enough to imagine her death will be something special to them. Davenport, advanced in years even before she met him, probably won’t be far behind her. Her memory has been fading recently, and part of her wonders if Davenport is already gone and she simply forgot.

As her vision starts to grow hazy around the edges, her mind floats to the last member of her family that she’ll ever see. Taako has a long, long life ahead of him, a life with his sister and his husband and all the happiness that he’s worked his ass off to earn. She prays every night that his self-made happy ending can begin to make up for the pain she caused him. There’s no forgiveness for her, but she can’t believe any loving god would make Taako pay for her sins, any more than he already has.

She can picture him now, kneeling by her bedside the way he was the last time she saw him. She can feel his lips on the back of her frail hand, and she hears his voice, the voice that has cheered for her and cursed her, sang with her and screamed at her, whisper “Go in peace.”

She decided long ago that she’d take whatever he deemed she deserved.

She never dreamed he’d give her _peace_.

Her eyes flutter shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr at imakemusicnothate


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